


the dark

by jessamoo



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Drabble, F/M, fic prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-27
Updated: 2014-08-27
Packaged: 2018-02-15 01:33:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2210700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessamoo/pseuds/jessamoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>for the prompt "you don't have to stay"</p>
            </blockquote>





	the dark

She doesn’t get her old room back, of course. She is a guest of his now, an ally, not a wife. She holds her shoulders back, using her earldom as armour, as a shield (she was after all, as far back as she cared to remember, a shield maiden at heart. But there were different kind of shields, she understood now, different kinds of battles, injuries, invisible bruises on her soul that wouldn’t leave.)

Some thing remain the same however. The way he looks at her, with a half feral smile, out from under his eyelashes like an animal sizing her up. The way she feels him without seeing him, like now, as he hovers in the doorway as she gets ready to sleep, in the room of a guest, in the uncomfortable bed of someone passed over. 

"What do you want Ragnar?" Lagertha unties her hair without looking at him. She knows the answer, there would have been a time when this would have happened without words.

"What I always wanted. It is strange to me to see you in this house once more. Strange, but familiar. We belong in this place together."

She finally looks at him, and shakes her head with a smile. “We never belonged here. We belong on a farm. We belonged there with our children, by the water where we would fish and build and play. Maybe you alone belong here, maybe with her. But we together do not.” She hasn’t thought about the past for a long time. She tried not to, it was far too painful a reminder of what she had lost. In dreams she can go there, to the good parts. When she is awake, all she can see is Gyda, pale and covered in flowers. Ragnar sees her too, she knows, as he scuffs his shoes on the floor and nods slowly.

"All places look the same in the dark." He shrugs. He has that tone of nonchalance, but she knows it masks the opposite.

"You have a new wife now, a good wife, you should go to her. You do not have to stay." 

"But I want to. Don’t tell me you don’t want me to."

She doesn’t say anything, because despite everything, she does. She always wanted him beside her, even when she hated him. He was mythical and godly, and cowardly and cruel and childish, he was hers, he was a young man trying to raise his children well, he was an old man alone on a mountain. She blows the candle out, plunging them into darkness, into the past, into her dreams, and she can almost pretend they are there as she feels his heavy frame wrap around hers.

Almost.


End file.
